from Archaeopteryx to Zuniceratops, the dinosaur ABC

Dinosaurs, Dinosaurs, Dinosaurs.... it's all about the Dinosaurs, Opeie is hooked and he has surprisingly dragged his brother in on all the excitement. These wonderful beasts have kept us well entertained over the last few weeks with some great themed activities. Earlier this week me and Opeie were chatting about his new favourite subject and we got on to the topic of whether there is a dinosaur for every letter of the alphabet. Obviously a conversation like that is clearly going to kick start an activity.

I wanted to answer Opeie's question but i didn't know myself so aside from the fun of finding out if we could complete a dinosaur ABC i wanted to show Opeie how we find the information we need. We headed down to out local library, we can walk to which is great so we went looking for books that could help us with our task. I'm always surprised at how quiet our library is most of the time. We've been there today and considering it is the school holiday and it was raining out it was a ghost town. 

With a stack of books to scan out we headed home and found out a big roll of paper ready for our fun research activity. We wrote A-Z down the one side of the page and then started by seeing how much we could fill in from the information we knew ourselves. I thought Opeie would go straight in for his favourite Triceratops but he actually started from 'A' and shouted Archaeopteryx which i was really impressed by, followed by Brachiosaurus. C was our first issue but we did manage to fill in quite a few before turning to our first research device, books.

As expected there was a great source of research material at the library and as we sat in the hallway surrounded by books we looked through them together hoping to fill in all the blanks from our dinosaur ABC.  We managed two thirds of our activity before Opeie wanted to move on to something else, so today we picked up where we left off and got stuck in hoping to complete what we had started. This time though we had Seth on hand who turned out to be an excellent researcher.

We had looked through around 20 Dinosaur books but we still hadn't completed our A-Z so we moved on to our next place for information, the internet. Now i know we could have just gone straight on to the internet to get all the relevant information we needed but wheres the fun in that? The boys love reading and going to the library and i think it is really important for them to know that that information is there readily available to them, i did explain though that sometimes the books and information are not always on hand and that is where the internet will reign supreme.

The National History Museum's Dino directory filled in all the gaps we needed. Saying that though we were only missing F,J,X,Y and Z so we had done pretty well. We also learned some interesting facts too as we searched on the 'in your country' section and found out that 23 dinosaurs were discovered in England, we are unsure how accurate this is though as Opeie pointed out that all the Pterosaurs were missing from the directory.

 Thanks to some great researching from the boys we found a dinosaur for every letter of the alphabet and picked up some great dinosaur facts a long the way. I cant stress to people that i meet enough about the importance of using the library and the information that is available to you cost free. Having access to that kind of literature is a great tool for children to be able to use in all aspects of their learning.

Now its time for me to do some research of my own for the next big Dino activity...

ROOOOOAAAAAARRRRRRR!!!!

*NOTE, Opeie was so excited about 'W for Wooley Mammoth that I didn't have the heart to tell him.
 

"I think that we all do heroic things, but hero is not a noun, it's a verb."

I may be mistaken but i don't think LEGO came in small plastic packets when i was a boy or maybe i just have a terrible memory. Mixels, Minifigures, Hero factory and other smaller kits are great at pocket money prices and are perfect for entertaining the boys when we go places, they would also be great as stocking fillers this Christmas. We love getting family members involved in our building as much as we can and during our recent visit to Auntie Lottie's house, Grandad as always was first to jump in with a helping hand or two.

I may be an enormous LEGO fan and have been all my life but it wasn't until recently that we gave LEGO Hero factory a try. I wont lie, I'm stuck in my ways when it comes to our beloved bricks and being brought up on the classic style LEGO i was quite sure that the Hero factory range wasn't something that was going to appeal to me personally. But i was really surprised that it was something that Opeie really enjoyed building.

what didn't cross my mind until i saw him playing was that the pieces are mostly chunky, making the connecting of each part easier for his little hands. Grandad very quickly gave up and couldn't work out what to do but Opeie took charge (with a little help from me too).

The Tunneler beast Vs. Surge kit  Is one of many kits from the LEGO Hero Factory range and i think the main appeal for Opeie was the Hero minifigure that came with the build. Not quite as cute as the classic minifigure but Opeie loves anything small that he can take apart and put back together.

Unlike some of the classic style LEGO brick kits the Hero factory range are a lot stronger during play and you can be more heavy handed which is great for excitable little builders who take the Vs. in the title quite literally and want a full scale battle on completion.

"Collecting is more than just buying objects."

When I first started writing the blog it was going to be a pretty unpersonal affair. No names and no pictures of us just posts about playing and a homage to mine and my boys love of toys. All our posts were about new toys we had found and how we loved playing. The early posts were dominated by one range of toys in particular. A collection I had started for Opeie when I found out he was on his way, that collection is still going strong and locked away for when he is a lot older despite not adding to it for about 6 months, until yesterday.

I was drawn into the Marvel Super hero squad range from the moment i saw them. Aside from the more 'grown up' collectors ranges like 'legends' or 'select', super hero squad boasted the largest variety of heroes and villains aimed at a younger audience. These figures are great, a cute introduction for younger children into the magical world of comics and all the characters I grew up admiring.  Opeie's collection is pretty immense and even though I've got a lot of the characters there are still loads I need to track down. Yesterday's delivery added a few great characters I was missing, Thanos, Gambit, night crawler, Beast etc and has relit the flame for hunting down the missing characters.

It's great to see when I'm looking online that some of the characters I own are fetching much higher than the £5.99 asking price I found them at when I first started collecting. The internet has been a god send for anything we're collecting but while we were in Florida last year we popped into target and i spotted three boxes of figures from the Iron man 3 movie. The problem with collecting a range like this is that most of the characters were never released in this country so finding them has been daunting at times.

 I love collecting, there's something so satisfying about finding the things that you are looking for, my inner geek comes out full force. When I first met Mrs M she saw it as hoarding but I think she understands now especially after I tracked her down most of the Dick Bruna book collection a few Christmas' ago for an advent gift. I love jumping in on other peoples collections too I find it all quite exciting.

Well as I said the new additions were delivered yesterday which spurred me on to get the rest of the collection out while Opeie was having his afternoon nap. Seth hadn't seen them all out of storage and his eyes lit up at the amount of characters that were there. There will probably be many more posts abot these figures, at least until i have completed the collection. I have a few collections on the go for the boys, i think it will be nice to have something to give them that they will love and who knows they might be worth a little something by then.